October is breast cancer awareness month, and to remind residents, my hometown of College Park has gone pink! In addition to the pink ribbons displayed at the post office and in my many shop windows, College Park crosswalks and curbs at the corners of Princeton Avenue/Smith Street and Edgewater Drive were painted bright pink. A pink Orlando Police Department cruiser also patrolled the streets, supposedly driven by an officer who is a breast cancer survivor. Way to raise awareness, College Park!
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we’re going to write about cancer and how it has impacted your life. Unfortunately, most everyone has had to deal with cancer personally or with a family member or close friend. Cancer fired a warning shot across my bow several years ago, which made it real for me. Then I saw such amazing courage and determination firsthand when I served as artist-in-residence at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Orlando.
So write a story about how cancer has touched your life. When you’re finished, please share your story with us in the comments below this post.
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Brenda
Writing October 30, 2015
Halloween is tomorrow when ghosts, goblins, witches and warlocks invade our world and frighten adult and child alike. Halloween falls on October 31st the night before November 1st – All Saints Day. Saints are honored or “hallowed” thus the night before All saints was All Hallows Eve which eventually became Halloween.
As a child My sisters and brother, and cousins, and I loved Halloween – who wouldn’t with all that free, yummy candy and great games: bobbing for apples or blindfolded, arms behind your back, trying to eat a cinnamon donut suspended on a string from the doorjamb. But that celebration was only beginning.
All Saints Day, a holy day of obligation for Catholics which means we were all required to attend mass, falls on November 1st,. Later on that day we celebrated my older sister’s birthday at a family party. What fun to have cake and ice cream the day after gorging ourselves on candy! Life was good. I suppose those good times continued as great memories when we grew up so much so that I never forgot my sister’s birthday.
As it happens, her 50th was the last birthday she celebrated. She died the following August from a nasty form of breast cancer. She didn’t need to die. She had never had a mammogram until she discovered a large lump on her left breast. Of course she immediately went to the doctor, went through a biopsy and double mastectomy, chemo, and radiation, but it was too late. The cancer had spread all over her body eventually even reaching her brain. Besides her siblings, she left two high school aged children and her husband. Twenty five years later, I am still angry with her. Her boys did not need to lose her. She could have held her grandchildren and spent hours playing with them. Her arrogance in not going for regular checkups and having a yearly mammogram deprived her entire family of her presence.
By contrast, my sister-in-law always had a yearly checkup and a yearly mammogram. A dot the size of the head of a common pin was found on her left breast. She went through a biopsy and mastectomy. The doctor said that her cancer was particularly virulent and, in so many words, a killer. She, too was young, in her 40s when the cancer was discovered. She has had many birthdays since then. In fact on December 6th, we will celebrate her 80th birthday with her family and close friends. These fifty people were not deprived of her presence because she did what she needed to do.
Thanks, Auntie Anne and Happy Birthday.